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sprinkler valve rattling sound

hey everyone. im a Gardener from Los Angeles County. i do maintenance and sprinkler irrigations. but there are always questions. and alot more to lear. today a customer came out and said my sprinkler are not working properly. the lawn was pretty dry cause she had turned it off. 1st she heard a rattle sound of a pipe at midnignt. i told her it might of just been the water pressure kicking in when the sprinklers turned on. 2nd. i tested the control box and all ten valves were making a rattle sound. water was coming on but weaker than usual. i cound understand sometimes 1 valve goes bad you diagnose. piece of cake right. now i told her i would replace all of them. but what if thats not the problem. what if maybe the timer isnt working properly. manually they work fine. someone familiar with this please help me.. thank you

Rattling

I was going to suggest that maybe there's a pressure regulator to the sprinkler system that's broken. That could explain the low pressure and possibly the rattling. Since they work manually I don't believe this to be the case. I give one vote for the controller. I've seen controllers make the valves give off a wicked rattle. The valves still operated though. I took a solenoid and touched it directly to the terminals of the controller. The solenoid rattled like mad. It was obviously the controller causing the rattle. I installed a new controller and no more rattle. The valves also have a ground wire in common. Even though I can't remember ever seeing this I wonder if a weak signal due to a bad splice could cause the solenoids to just rattle and not open. I welcome any other comments on that idea.

Good thoughts mr fixit. I agree take a systematic approch. I would first rule out electrical problems controller and wiring before you replace any valves. then i would replace one solenoid and then one valve till I found the problem

I think it's electrical

Sounds like a short, or a malfunctionin soenoid. I assume when you said they all worked manually, you were refering to operating when you open the bleeder valve. You can test each for resistance, or use the battery test.....snap 3 - 9 volts together in series, and hitch each end of each solenoids wires to the + and - terminals to see if the valve fires. You might find by disconnecting each solenoid, you can fire them one at a time using your controller (but only attach one at a time.

May be a short in the common. Any recent digging?

If the valves work with the battery test, you know he valves are not the problem, it still could be th solenoids wiring or the controller.

Easiest way to r/o controller, is disconnect the rwires and hitch them up to a new controller. If it works, problem is probably the controller.